OneCarolina project team training officially got underway recently as the Finance team began a six-week crash course that included looks at PeopleSoft General Ledger, Accounts Receivable/Payable, Billing, Commitment Control, Procurement, Assets, and Cash.

OneCarolina Training Coordinator Shannon Hicks says that getting functional experts familiar with PeopleSoft’s default offerings early in the project will pay huge dividends down the road when the systems are being configured.

"Training the project team on the vanilla version of PeopleSoft will allow them to see the ease of product while thinking about any changes that will need to be made to the out-of-the-box system to allow for USC specific processes," she said. "If they can see how streamlined their processes can be without doing a lot of custom configuration, then they're not as likely to make their new system look like their old system just to avoid change."

Hicks recently joined the OneCarolina PMO team after serving in a number of different roles with three previous ERP implementations.

"I think it's also important to realize that we're doing more than just training," she continued. "We’re empowering our experts to be part of the next wave of technology."

At this point, classes are only being held for subject matter experts from the various functional areas; there won’t be end-user training until closer to when systems go live in mid- and late-2015. Human Resources and Payroll squads will step up to the plate in April for their own sessions.

"What's really neat to see on this project is that each of the leads understand how integrated the system will be, and I think they're having some great dialogue and great discussion. I'm seeing good chemistry there, and it's really fun to watch," said OneCarolina Project Director Bob Swab.